One step forward, two steps back
By Steven Martinovich
web posted July 26, 2004
Dr. Ivan Eland is a senior fellow and director of the Center on
Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and an outspoken
critic of the Bush administration's war on terrorism. In this
exclusive interview with Enter Stage Right Dr. Eland responds to
the report of the 9/11 Commission.
ESR: The 9/11 Commission recommended the creation of a
counter-terrorism center to coordinate foreign and domestic
intelligence on terrorism but you're opposed to that idea. Why?
IE: Because the CIA already has one. The main problem in 9/11
was large government security bureaucracies not coordinating
with each other. So why do we need yet another intelligence
center. We already have 15 intelligence agencies. The U.S.
government's security apparatus was set up to counter the
security bureaucracies of other nation-states, which are equally
or more slothful than our own. Unfortunately, al-Qaida is an agile
non-bureaucratic organization (terrorists don't fill out forms
before they attack). The government needs to fight it by
becoming more streamlined, not by adding even more
bureaucracy. More bureaucracy will lead to more of the
coordination problems experience prior to and on 9/11.
ESR: Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced on
Thursday on Fox News that an intelligence czar wasn't
necessary. Are you heartened by that news or do you think
Americans will eventually see the creation of the post?
IE: I agree with Ridge that a new intelligence czar is not needed.
For the same reason as stated above. The Director of Central
Intelligence is already supposed to be in charge of the
fragmented and bloated 15-agency intelligence community. But
he has no control over the intelligence budgets and personnel
working on intelligence in other government agencies. He should
be given that authority. Creating a layer of bureaucracy above
the DCI is unnecessary and only adds more needless
bureaucracy.
ESR: You were also critical because the 9/11 Commission did
not address the root causes of the September 11, 2001 attacks,
what you identify as America's foreign policy in the Middle East.
What's your version of the causes?
IE: Most Americans don't realize how much the United States
has meddled in the Islamic world since WWII. People there are
made about it. Contrary to what many in the elite foreign policy
circles in Washington would have us believe, poll after poll in the
Islamic world indicate that people like American culture,
technology and political and economic freedoms, but hate U.S.
government policy toward the Islamic world. Bin Laden's chief
gripe with the U.S. government is that it props up corrupt
governments in the Islamic world (e.g., Pakistan, Egypt and
Saudi Arabia).
Conservatives, who emphasize going back to first principles,
should remember that General George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson and the other founders were against profligate military
interventions overseas and meddling in other countries' business
(what conservatives correctly seemed to be saying during the
Clinton administration). The founders realized that war leads to a
loss of liberties and big government at home. Certainly, bin
Laden and al-Qaida need to be put out of action, but over the
long-term the United States should realize that repeated military
action in the Islamic world merely shakes the hornets' nest
unnecessarily. After al-Qaida is eradicated, the United States
should quietly realize that, after the Cold War, the advantages to
profligate military interventions overseas are outweighed by the
new danger of catastrophic blowback.
ESR: Many experts have argued that America's foreign policy is
merely the hook that Islamists hang their coat on, that the real
cause of friction is the Islamist dream of a world under the
control of a caliphate. How would you respond?
IE: I haven't heard many experts argue this. A few
neoconservative experts have. Even if this were the goal of the
Islamists, they don't have the resources to be the worldwide
threat that the Soviet Union was. They are very poor (compared
to the U.S.) and from poor countries. Destroying skyscrapers in
a hit-and-run attack is one thing, taking over the globe, or even
the Islamic world, would be impossible for them. Bin Laden
came home from Afghanistan after fighting one set of "infidels" in
a Moslem land and saw another "infidel" (the United States) with
a military presence in the land of the Moslem holy sites (Saudi
Arabia). Islamic radicals get particularly perturbed when they
perceive that an infidel is trying to take over a Moslem land. So
the American propping up of the corrupt Saudi monarchy is what
originally set bin Laden off. If neoconservative doubt what bin
Laden says makes him mad, then they should read the opinion
polls in the Islamic world. U.S. meddling is the root of the
general hostility, which spawns anti-U.S. terrorism.
ESR: Do you think it's realistic, given the nature of the globalized
economy and the need for oil, that the U.S. can disengage
politically from the Middle East?
IE: Conservatives who are market oriented should see through
the convenient myth that we need to defend cheap oil. Half of the
Pentagon's budget is justified on this premise, but economists,
both left and right, are skeptical of it. Milton Friedman, before
the first Gulf War, said don't go to war for oil. Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf states have little else to sell. They need to sell the oil
more than the west needs to buy it. Most of this irrational fear of
dependence on foreign oil is left over from the 1970s, when the
U.S. government failed to let market mechanisms work and the
price of oil to rise--the result: traumatic gas lines. Eighty percent
of U.S. semiconductors come from East Asia and no one talks
about defending them. Only about 20 percent of U.S. oil comes
from the Persian Gulf. Even this doesn't matter because there is a
worldwide market for this fungible good. The German economy
from 1998 to 2000 endured a 211 percent rise in the price of oil
and still prospered. The stagflation in the 1970s had less to do
with rising oil prices and more to do with money supply
mismanagement. Free marketeers should be ashamed of
themselves for falling for these socialist security arguments.
ESR: What for you was the biggest surprise in the commission's
report?
IE: I was pleasantly surprised that they nixed a domestic spy
agency in favor of reform in the FBI. Conservatives who are
concerned about preserving the civil liberties enshrined in the
Constitution should also be pleased.
ESR: You've been one of the administration's biggest critics since
the war against terrorism began, did the commission's report
address any of your concerns?
IE: No, because it didn't deal with the war on terrorism. It dealt
with al-Qaida's attack on 9/11. There shouldn't be a war on
terrorism or Iraq. There should be a war on al-Qaida. The Bush
administration didn't have the backbone to put enough special
forces into Afghanistan to get bin Laden and instead relied on the
unreliable Northern Alliance (on two separate occasions bin
Laden got away because of this decision). al-Qaida is the one
who attacked us, not Iraq or Hezbollah or Hamas or any other
terror groups. The 9/11 commission implied that the war on
terror was taken too widely. We are merely increasing terrorism
(see the State Dept.'s latest figures) by going after these targets.
If the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and the Nazis declare war
on you, you fight the Japanese and Germans. You don't attack
Russia. Then you have three enemies.
ESR: What would you have liked the commission to address that
it didn't?
IE: The underlying reason that al-Qaida attacked America. U.S.
foreign policy. Improvements in homeland security can only go
so far in protecting such a vast open democracy. Lessening our
target profile is much more important than government officials
and bureaucrats in Washington moving around boxes on an
organizational chart.
ESR: In an essay last week entitled "Oops, They Invaded the
Wrong Country?" you argued that it was clear Iran had closer
ties to al-Qaida then Iraq ever did, particularly considering that
as many as 10 of the September 11 hijackers were given safe
passage by the Iranians during the year before the attacks. If
that's the case, would you support an invasion of Iran?
IE: No, it's doubtful that the Iranian government knew about
9/11. I was merely pointing out that Iran was a bigger threat than
Iraq (in sponsorship of terrorism and progress toward getting a
nuclear weapon and long-range missile that could deliver it to the
United States). But even Iran is not that big a threat to the U.S.
because its few nukes (the worst case years from now) could be
deterred with the thousands of nuclear warheads in America's
most potent nuclear arsenal in the world.
ESR: You have a new book coming out in October called "The
Empire Has No Clothes," in which you argue that the American
government has become an imperial force. Can you tell us about
the book?
IE: My book shows that U.S. foreign policy in the post-World
War II era has been much the same under Democrat and
Republican administrations and during the Cold War and after it.
Contrary to the founders' policy of military restraint and no
entangling alliances, the United States spread its empire around
the world with hundreds of military bases and many alliances and
military interventions. This has created an informal empire (as
opposed to the formal British and Roman empires) abroad and
an imperial presidency at home. It has led to big government at
home (not just security spending, but domestic spending as well)
and an erosion of America's unique liberties. Even "national
greatness" conservatives should be leery of empire because it
may erode U.S. economic power and lead to the demise of the
United States as a great power. At the height of the British
empire just before WWI, who would have predicted that
overextension and war would turn it into rubble in just over 30
years.
My new book has an entire chapter devoted to why
conservatives should be against a U.S. empire.
ESR: Thanks very much for your time.
Steven Martinovich is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Ontario and
the editor in chief of Enter Stage Right.